We want students to think critically, but what does that mean?
How I used the “is water wet?” debate to practice critical thinking
During the last school year, students brought up the question ‘is water wet?’ in two-thirds of the classes I taught. I guess it was a thing at the time. The first time it happened, I didn’t have much of a response, but for all subsequent occurrences I was prepared for the conversation — I used the question as an opportunity for my class to practice critical thinking.
The term “critical thinking” is used often in education. However, for a long time I felt that there was a lack of consistency regarding how it was defined. This lack of consistency can lead to students being confused about what is expected of them.
Need For A Definition
In the summer of 2015, I attended the 100th annual MathFest conference organized by the Mathematical Association of America. During one of the sessions geared towards teaching undergraduate math classes, talk after talk was given which described teaching methods that the presenters claimed fostered critical thinking, among other competencies. While many of the ideas were interesting, not a single presenter offered a description of what critical thinking meant to them. If you are presenting about how your work accomplishes a certain goal (i.e. promoting critical thinking), shouldn’t you define what that goal is?
I decided that there were only 2 possibilities: either (1) everyone in the room except for me knows some kind of true, accepted definition of critical thinking that’s supposed to be common knowledge; or (2) nobody presenting was comfortable enough to attempt to explain what critical thinking means.
My gut tells me it is the latter. Indeed, L. Dee Fink in his book Creating Significant Learning Experiences makes reference to a study* that suggested that while 75–80% of college teachers said they promote critical thinking in the classroom, only about 19% of them were able to give a clear explanation of what critical thinking is.
As a high school teacher, I need to be wary not to request critical thinking from my students before actually discussing with them what it means, otherwise they’ll just be confused like I was at that MathFest session.
Is Water Wet?
My personal understanding of what critical thinking means has been strongly influenced by my recent participation in the development of the 3C Thinking Program at Fraser Academy (the 3Cs stand for creative, critical, and collaborative thinking — they are woven together in the 3C program). The working definition of critical thinking in this program is:
Critical Thinking: The process of analyzing background knowledge to arrive at a reasoned, criteria-based conclusion.
When students asked the question “is water wet?” in class, it was a good opportunity to practice critical thinking in the essence defined above:
- Listen to students sharing their initial thoughts and arguments. This allows everyone to get a sense of what background knowledge people are bringing into the conversation.
- Ask students to create and agree on a list of criteria for what makes something wet. This may lead to research that extends their background knowledge.
- Analyze whether or not water satisfies these criteria to arrive at a conclusion. This may lead to even more research to extend their knowledge further.
The 3C Thinking program really helped me to clarify my own conception of what critical thinking is, which allows me to more effectively communicate expectations to my students.
*Paul, R., Elder, L., and Bartell, T. 1997. California Teacher Preparation for Instruction in Critical Thinking: Research Findings and Policy Recommendations. Sonoma, Calif.: Foundation for Critical Thinking
